40 Souls to Keep - 9. Chapter 9

September 2007

Jase had been alone and on his own for almost two years when he met Philip, and up until then he’d kept the count for fun. Helen had been number one, Sally in Kansas City number two, and from then on a virtual ticker ran in his head, unfailingly accurate despite the fact that Jase spent most of that time trying to keep himself sane, mostly with barely legal boys and vodka.

Philip changed him—saved him, if Jase wanted to get technical, because for twenty-two months he’d been a puppet on a string, going where the dreams sent him. To be fair, Jase took his turn at puppet master too, manipulating people when the need arose—and other times when it didn’t. In the dead of night when sleep wouldn’t come, and he gave his lot more than a stray sober thought, he would consider different ways of killing himself.

The morning he met Philip started with a blowjob, with Jase on the receiving end. Groggily, he shifted to his back on the saggy double bed, stretched and rode it out, pulling at the kid’s hair a bit. He’d said last night how much he liked that, and Jase found it easy to comply with such a guileless request. What was the kid’s name? Mark? Mike? Jase settled on “Baby,” always a safe alternative.

Afterward, sprawled over Jase’s legs like a contented kitten, the kid sent him a smoldering look as he licked his lips clean. “What else can I do for you, Jase? Just tell me what you like. I want to make you happy.”

Maybe it was all that cheap vodka that had him heaving his guts into the toilet two minutes later.

He smoked while the kid made him breakfast, even though there was a No Smoking sign taped to the window in the kitchen. He’d tried his hand at several self-destructive habits recently, abandoning most, but the cigarettes had stuck. It was something else to count. Twenty smokes in a box, one every thirty minutes, meant he managed a pack a day without even breaking a sweat. The shitty part was it wouldn’t kill him overnight.

“Smoking makes my asthma go crazy,” Baby had said the night before when Jase lit up. “But you can smoke, Jase. It’s okay if you do.”

It was also okay to bring Jase back to his run-down studio apartment, even though the first thing Baby had claimed when Jase had bought him a drink was that he wasn’t looking to hook up. Changing the kid’s mind had taken five seconds and three words. “Yes, you are.”

“Have another,” Baby said when Jase ground out the butt in the sink. His arms tightened around Jase’s neck, and he rubbed against him like a tomcat. “I don’t mind.”

“You’re sweet, Baby,” Jase said, right before he took the kid over his rickety kitchen table.

After breakfast Jase asked for a ride to the Safeway shopping center two miles away. His gut told him he’d be early, but any later and Baby would be late for work. Jase wasn’t a complete bastard.

“Hey,” he called, sifting through the kid’s closet. “I’m going to borrow jeans and a shirt.” He’d leave behind what he’d been wearing yesterday. The ensemble was stale and smelled like smoke, but he’d gotten it at Aeropostale just the day before, after the saleslady had insisted he couldn’t leave the store without it—on her dime, of course. He’d thought the price ridiculous for denim and cotton, but the jeans would look good on Baby—payment for services rendered. He kicked them into the corner and snagged a T-shirt off a hanger. “Can I have this blue one?”

“Whatever you want,” Baby sang from the bathroom, and Jase tipped his head against the wall until the nausea passed. He lifted twenty bucks from the kid’s wallet without bothering to ask, then kissed him sweetly when they parted in the Safeway parking lot.

“Will I see you again?” Baby asked, so openly hopeful that Jase worked up a genuine spark of affection.

He leaned in through the open window. “You’re going to be fine without me. You’re a great guy. Now off you go before you’re late for work.” The kid grinned as he drove away, and Jase turned and followed a crowd of people into the grocery store.

Jase had dreamed of Harry Kearns two nights ago. He’d been in Baltimore, between jobs, so to speak. The dream hadn’t been as bad as some—he hadn’t awakened screaming his head off—and he’d learned over time that meant the scene wouldn’t be a violent one. He didn’t resent the sparse detail. He had a name in his head, which was rare enough that Jase rolled it around his tongue as he lurked near the entrance.

Harry Kearns.

Harry ambled through the door thirty minutes later, and Jase’s special sense latched on to him like a magnet. He didn’t always know what the people he was sent to help would look like, but that rarely made a difference. He could feel when they were close.

Jase recognized a working-class guy when he saw one. Harry’s gray trousers were stained and his blue shirt had a dime-sized rip in the shoulder. His fingernails were dark with some substance—oil, maybe.

Harry grabbed a cart and veered left into the produce section, where he began a forensic inspection of the peaches, squeezing one after another. The first ten went back in the bin, and he kept digging. Picky dude. Jase watched him lumber around the fruit and vegetables bins for twenty minutes, wondering who spent that much time angsting over the color of their bananas.

Produce was flanked by both the deli and the bakery, so there was plenty on this side of the store to hold Harry’s attention, but then there was plenty of Harry to entertain. He was a big guy to begin with, easily six foot five, and at least fifty pounds overweight.

When he went suddenly still at the Granny Smith apple bin and reached over to squeeze his left arm, face twisting into a grimace, Jase realized how it was going to shake out. He eased closer, pushing his own empty cart.

The pain passed, and Harry moved on, wheeling over to the bakery. Jase maneuvered close enough to watch a sheen of sweat break out on his forehead. His complexion went noticeably grayer while he was perusing the French baguettes, which he took a pass on in order to shoulder his way up to the pastry display. The two apples, one peach and three bananas were joined by an entire pumpkin pie, a dozen chocolate chip cookies, and one Boston cream doughnut. Jase’s eyes widened at the booty. Honestly, if the fates—or whatever they were— were worried about Harry, they should have intervened years ago.

At a display of single-serving cherry tarts, Harry stopped again and bent over, swallowing repeatedly. Sensing the time was near, Jase pushed his cart out of the way and stepped up behind him. Harry tried steadying himself on the table, then clapped a hand to his chest and crashed to his knees. The artful spread of cherry tarts tipped under his weight, rolling across the floor and ensuring enough chaos that Jase was able to reach Harry quickly and, more importantly, before anyone else.

“Back off,” he told the next person to reach his side. “I’m a doctor.” His voice rose on the last syllable, but he managed to swallow the hysterical laughter bubbling up his throat. “Keep everyone away.”

Of course, the crowd obeyed.

“Hey, Harry,” Jase said, shifting the man’s head off the edge of the toppled table and onto a wadded-up jacket someone had handed him. “Don’t worry. You’re going to be fine.”

Eyes bulging and lips turning blue, Harry grabbed Jase’s hand and wheezed his panic.

“Trust me,” Jase said.

There was no preparing for the pain, mostly because Jase never knew what form it was going to take. Gritting his teeth, he laid a hand over Harry’s failing heart. The clamor of raised voices faded until the only thing Jase heard was an irregular, slowing drumbeat. Healing was simply a matter of opening his mind. When he did, and his hands were on the person in question, his power took the reins. Despite Jase’s claim to the gathering crowd, he was no doctor. Yet he always understood where to direct his thoughts so that the damage would be immediately repaired.

This time, the pain began as an ache in his stomach that folded into an excruciating cramp. Intense as it was, it was also short-lived, giving way to the pleasure that always followed. His reward. Jase breathed through both, keeping his hands pressed to Harry’s chest until he was sure his job was done.

The blue skin around Harry’s lips turned a healthier pink. His heart settled into a sedate, calm rhythm.

“Thank you,” he whispered, fumbling for Jase’s hand.

“Sure thing, Harry.” Jase struggled to his feet, smiling at how pleasure tingled through his fingers and toes. “Try to take better care of yourself, okay?”

“You bet,” Harry croaked.

Several sets of hands reached for him. The paramedics had arrived. Jase let himself be pushed to the back of the crowd, and he slipped away. Across the wide parking lot but still in the same plaza was a Starbucks. Jase followed the green sign as though it were a shining star in the dark, weaving between cars like a drunkard, higher than usual with the strange euphoria.

Because this time he’d seen, and it was impossible to predict when he’d have those visions.

Harry was never going to be anything special himself, but a few years from now, he’d be there when somebody needed him. In an eerie repeat of his own near death, he’d save someone, a man, who would live and go on to save even more lives. Many, many lives.

Jase smiled, satisfied. These glimpses into the futures of those he helped took the harsh edge off his loneliness. Unfortunately, they were rare. His existence had become a tangled web of action and reaction, fate and karma, coincidence and synchronicity. Even spinning high above the earth as he was right then, glowing with knowledge and success, he hated it.

Once, about a year before, in a drunken haze, he’d tried to resist the call. The compulsion to go, to heal, had set his feet walking even as tears of frustration poured down his face. Escape was impossible. This mission was his mate, ’til death did they part.

A course of action he’d considered more than once.

This thought was still haunting him, coasting alongside the pleasure, when he stumbled through the door of the Starbucks and hit a wall of coffee-and caramel-scented air. His hands hadn’t stopped trembling, so for once he stood in line, calming to the soft jazz playing over the speakers. By the time it was his turn to order, he felt almost normal. And starving. “Venti coffee and three vanilla scones,” he told the barista. Baby’s twenty bucks was in his wallet, but Jase was too lazy to reach for it.

Why should he?

“That’ll be $4.16,” the barista said.

Jase nodded, gesturing to the person behind him. “This guy will pay for it.”

The man behind him had to be pushing sixty and was dressed like he still lived in the ’60s. His long hair was pulled into a ponytail at the nape of his neck, and he wore a faded and stretched tie-dyed shirt. At Jase’s words, he nudged his wire-rimmed glasses higher on his nose and glared. “The hell I will,” he said as the barista handed over Jase’s coffee.

Jase fumbled the cup, spilling the scalding liquid over his hand. Too shocked to notice the burn, he tried again. “You’ll pay for my order.”

“Are you high, son?” the man blurted.

The manager glided over, ready to mediate the war before it affected her sales. “That man should pay for his order,” the barista said, pointing first at the hippie then at Jase, “but he’s not going to.”

The manager eyed Jase, and he smiled at her. She toppled like a house of cards. “Sir,” she said, addressing the hippie, “you’ll have to pay for his order.”

Still the guy didn’t move, except to stare at them all as if they were crazy. Jase didn’t like the uneasy feeling that had invaded his blissful state. Screw this. He reached for his wallet.

“All right,” the guy said before Jase could pull it out. Politeness had replaced the antagonism. “No problem. Add a grande cappuccino on there.” He handed over a ten-dollar bill, and in the confusion of change-making and the how-much-froth-do-you-like conversation, Jase tried to slip away. He was more than willing to chalk the incident up to some wacky delayed reaction. What he wasn’t willing to do was dwell on it. He thought about this shit too much as it was.

The hippie caught his arm. “Not so fast, son. What do you say, since I just bought your breakfast, you indulge me with a moment of your time.”

“Sorry,” Jase said, still swaying under the euphoria of healing Harry. “I’ve got somewhere I need to be.”

“I don’t think you’ve got anywhere you need to be unless it has to do with that tattoo on your arm.”

Jase started violently, but the hippie caught him before he could escape.

“Now, don’t panic,” he said, leading Jase to a plump-cushioned chair, while the barista and her manager wrung their hands in unison. “Have a seat, get your bearings, and I’ll be right back.”

The hippie crossed the restaurant to collect Jase’s scones and some napkins, moving with an easy grace that spoke of confidence and control, his expression thoughtful. He never once looked back to make sure Jase stayed put.

Unsteady, Jase bent his arm to inspect his tattoo. Surely he hadn’t meant—

“Yep, got one of my own. Left arm, above the elbow.” The hippie sat down across from Jase and offered his hand. “Philip Rhodes.” He pushed Jase’s scones across the table. “You look peaked. Better eat.”

One look at the scones had Jase’s stomach roiling. He moved them aside. “Who are you?”

“I just said. Philip Rhodes.” Philip took a sip of his cappuccino, leaving a line of foam on his upper lip. “What’s your name?”

Jase, he nearly said, then went for the truth instead. “I don’t know.”

The scones slid back into sight, helped along by one of Philip’s long fingers. “I kind of figured. I’m not kidding about the food. Make an effort. What name do you go by, then?”

“Jase.” For the first time it felt foreign on his lips. Mechanically, he picked up a scone.

Philip leaned back, setting his coffee on his stomach. “Jase. It means healer.”

Of course it did. Another cosmic joke with the least amusing punchline ever. “Wow,” Jase said, bitterness filling his mouth alongside the sweet pastry. “What a crazy coincidence.”

“I doubt it was coincidence.” Philip blew across the top of his cup. “Not sure I believe in such a thing anymore.”

Jase took up his coffee. The shake was back in his hands. Whatever comfort zone he’d found for himself had evaporated. He felt as lost as he had the afternoon he’d awoken on the park bench. It had taken Philip less than five minutes to strip everything away. And yet he’d given something back, hadn’t he? Just exactly what, Jase didn’t know, except...I’m not alone.

“You said you had a tattoo,” Jase said.

“Yep.” Unprompted, Philip pulled up his shirtsleeve to reveal his. Jase held his breath until it came into view. On the inside of his left elbow was the number 28 in the same stark black as Jase’s. Jase stared at it a long time, swallowing against an unwilling camaraderie. “What number do you have?” Philip asked. “I only caught a glimpse before.”

“Forty,” Jase said, sullen. He didn’t offer to show it. In fact, he pressed his arm closer to his side. He took a bite of a scone that tasted more like ash than it did vanilla.

Philip gave a low whistle. “That’s a lot of souls to save.”

“I guess,” Jase croaked. He blinked when Philip’s words penetrated. “Wait. What do you mean?”

“Forty souls, Jase. That’s your number. That’s your mission. I had mine, but it’s over now. Long over. Yours isn’t, obviously.”

“How do you—” About a hundred questions demanded to be asked first, and it took a moment to settle on one. He swallowed the last of the scone and washed it down with the strong coffee. “How do you know mine isn’t over?”

“Well, now.” Philip took his time centering his cappuccino on his napkin. “I know because of that stunt you pulled at the counter. I’m immune to your voice, you see, because I had the same ability myself. We all get it, the ones who are chosen.” He fixed Jase with a hard glare. “How many times a day do you take advantage of people like that?”

Jase flashed to Baby, his No Smoking sign and his pathetic urge to please. “I do what I have to,” he said, stirred to righteous anger. “How else do you expect me to survive?”

“The ability to influence is a gift,” Philip said. “It’s not a reward, it’s a catalyst. I’ve met a few who consider it a weapon, and that’s just plain wrong too. It’s a tool, one to be used discriminately. You have that number on your arm because you’re special. Strong. It isn’t given to weak-willed people, so don’t act like one.”

Jase bristled at the preaching tone as much as he did Philip’s arrogance. “A gift? Spare me,” he spat, lunging forward. His coffee slopped onto the table, soaking the bottoms of the scones. “This is no gift. It’s a curse. I want my life back!” he shouted, slamming a fist into the puddle of spilled liquid.

Philip took a moment to defuse the attention Jase’s outburst had caused, smiling sweetly at the women at the next table. They nodded, eyeing Jase with suspicion. Philip reached across the table, curling his fingers over Jase’s arm. “You’ll get your life back.”

Philip’s words sapped Jase’s anger in a heartbeat. They rattled around his head like dice, taking forever to settle. And the breathless anticipation was the same as if he’d tossed them down the green felt of a craps table. “I will?” he whispered.

Philip smiled. “You will.”

Jase cupped a hand over his mouth, daring Philip to take it back.

He didn’t.

“How do you know?” Jase asked. “How can you be sure?”

“It happened like that for me. And for the few others I’ve met. We’re chosen—don’t ask me by what, or whom, because I have no idea—and when we finish, when we’ve saved everyone we were meant to, then our memories come back.”

The memories, maybe. Jase wondered how many other things stayed lost forever. “Do we all do the same thing?” he asked.

Philip shook his head. He snapped the top off his cappuccino and downed the rest in one gulp. “I don’t know what you do. Me, I talked to people. Guided them in a time of indecision. Carried them through the crossroads. And since I had the ability to influence, just like you do, they always listened. I just had to make sure I got to them before it was too late.”

“Too late?”

“Before the wrong decision was made.” Philip left it at that, but Jase couldn’t.

“You mean suicide?”

“Sometimes. Timing, like I said, was crucial, but I learned as I went on. And the closer I got to the end, the easier it got to be there at the right time.”

Jase sagged against the back of his chair. He’d been riding the knife’s edge of this thing. Flying blind. He’d stopped trying to figure out how the pieces fit together months ago, only to have the mystery solved over a meal of scones and overpriced coffee. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he asked, “You said you talked to people. So...we don’t all heal?”

Philip’s eyebrows shot up. “Is that what you do?”

It was what he did. It was his life.

Philip read the answer in his eyes. “Well, that’s fine, son. Very fine.” His even tone could have meant two things. Either Jase was special, or he was in deep trouble. Philip didn’t seem inclined to pursue the topic, and, uneasy, Jase let it drop.

“This voice thing. You could do it too? Make people do what you want,” Jase clarified when Philip cocked his head.

“Everyone who’s been touched—” he tapped his arm where the tattoo sat, “—can influence. Think of it as a perk of the job.”

Seriously?

“It’s horrible,” Jase said, voice thick. “I hate it.” A vision of Baby swam in front of his eyes, spreading his legs wide on dark blue sheets. What else can I do for you, Jase?

Whatever I tell you to do. Perk of the job.

“It’s no walk in the park,” Philip agreed, voice heavy with compassion. “Some days, I thought about taking the easy way out.” To Jase’s narrowed eyes, he mimicked a gun at his temple and jerked his thumb on an imaginary trigger. “Quick and painless.”

Nope. Not alone. Not alone at all. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because I met someone, and she set me straight.”

There were no coincidences. Could be Philip knew what he was talking about. “I’ve been thinking about it,” Jase admitted, copying Philip’s gesture. Gun to head.

Philip grunted and spun his empty cup on its napkin.

“So tell me it ends.” If he had something to look forward to, a goal, then maybe a gun to the temple wouldn’t sound so attractive.

“It ends.” This part of the conversation made Philip a lot happier than hearing about Jase’s special talent. A genuine smile touched his lips. He pointed at Jase’s arm. “It ends at number forty.”

Jase had spent a lot of time studying the tattoo at first, but after a while it had faded into the background, just another part of his body, no different than his fingers or toes. Eventually he convinced himself that the strange number had nothing to do with his memory loss or strange dreams. It was just a number, some ink under his skin. Mundane. But now Philip was saying it was much more than that.

That it was everything.

“So—” It took a moment to work up enough saliva to speak. “I have to heal forty people.”

“Not just any forty,” Philip helpfully reminded him.

No, of course not. Jase could be done in an hour if that was the case. “The forty I’m sent to help.”

Philip nodded.

Another thought hit him as he bit into the second scone—a question, and not a new one. “Can I help anybody I want to, though? I mean, in addition to the forty?”

“No!” Philip lowered his voice when the two women broke off their gossip to glare at him. “No,” he said again, softly enough that Jase had to lean close to hear. “You haven’t done that, have you?”

Alarmed, Jase shook his head, answering honestly. “No.”

But he’d been tempted, several times. There had been one person in particular: a young cancer patient, a girl barely thirteen who wasn’t responding to treatment. She’d been the roommate of the young woman he’d been sent to help. When the healing had taken him to his knees, she’d guided him to a chair and fetched him cold water to drink. It would have been an easy thing, to touch her and take the sickness away. He hadn’t. He’d left her suffering, scared to push the limits of his power.

A genuinely sweet child with no chance to live, she’d been as deserving, in his mind, as anyone else he’d been sent to save. Her face still haunted him.

Now, gazing at Philip’s horrified expression, he felt faint with relief for having failed her that day. “I haven’t done that,” he repeated.

“Good.” Philip swept a hand over his face. “The only way I can explain it is this. You refer to this thing as a power, and that’s your right. But once I knew the truth, I always thought of it as a well. You can dip into it only so many times, and then it dries up. If it dries up before you reach your quota...” He shrugged, not spelling it out, but Jase didn’t need him to. The message had come through loud and clear.

He’d wander the rest of his life, never knowing his past.

“Thank you for telling me.” Jase swallowed on a dry throat. He’d been so close to ruining it all. “If I hadn’t met you today...”

“But you did. There are no coincidences.”

He kept saying that. If it bore repeating, then Jase would vow to remember the lesson. “What else can you tell me?”

Philip drew a deep breath. “What else would you like to know? I can probably fill in some blanks, but every journey is unique. In the end, all that matters is that you do what you were chosen for.”

That wasn’t all that mattered. Finding out what force was pulling the strings would be nice. “Did you do your twenty-eight?”

Philip’s smile lit up his face. “I did. And after the last one, I remembered everything.” He leaned forward, crushing his cup in his grip. “I remembered my real name. That I had a wife and two children. A life waiting for me.”

That was the rub, though. “Was it waiting for you?”

“In the three years I was gone, Sheila never stopped looking for me. She never gave up.”

The perfect fairy-tale ending. That didn’t mean it was waiting for everyone. But what if it was? What if there was someone expecting Jase to come home one day? He felt a physical ache in his chest at the thought, even if it was for someone he couldn’t remember.

“Why did this happen to me?” He hadn’t been expecting an answer, and Philip didn’t have one to give.

“Who knows why any of us are picked?”

“Picked by whom?”

Philip gave another glance around to see who might be listening. “By God?” he suggested, stroking his beard.

Scowling, Jase tore pieces off the last scone. “I don’t believe in God.” There was enough finality in his tone to close the conversation and, conceding, Philip spread his hands in front of him.

“I don’t believe in God either. The strange part is, I was close at one point, straddling the fence post of faith, but being sent on this mission—that’s how I think of it—changed me. It changed how I viewed the world.”

Jase couldn’t find that terribly surprising, not that he had any idea if he had changed from the person he used to be. But there were plenty of days when he woke up hating the intricacies of fate and intervention. The child inside him hoped he hadn’t always been so jaded. “So what convinced you?”

To this question, Philip said nothing. Frowning, he ran his fingers through his short beard, then shot another look at the surrounding tables. “What changed my mind is this,” he said finally. “Not all of us are out to change the world for the better.”

If it were possible to leave the current discussion behind for a stranger one, Philip had just succeeded. “What do you mean exactly?”

“Jase.” Philip’s eyes glittered behind his glasses. “That’s what you’re doing, don’t you see? Changing the world. Turning it in a better direction.”

They were getting dangerously close to the God concept again, so a question like “Who would have that power?” probably wasn’t prudent. “And you say there are others,” Jase asked, “who are working against that?”

Philip’s eyes fluttered shut, and his tanned, weathered face paled. “I’ve met them.”

A chill raced up Jase’s spine.

Philip took a deep breath and squared his shoulders before meeting Jase’s eyes again. “Be careful, Jase. That’s probably the best advice I can give you. And always be ready for things to go the opposite of how you’d expect.”

Jase smothered a wry smile, feeling as though he’d just been read his horoscope. “Yeah, okay. You want another?” He still had questions, and strong coffee would accompany them nicely. At the other man’s nod, Jase stood and moved to the back of the line, mind spinning.

He’d never forget Harry Kearns—number fourteen—the man he’d saved on the day he learned the truth. Now all he needed was to hang on to his sanity until number forty. Someday, this would end. It was the sort of joyful epiphany to be suspicious of—but gradually it nested in his brain as more of a fact and less of a wish.

He didn’t step to the front of the line. He waited, like everyone else. When he was the second person back, he turned, offering Philip a brief wave and pointing at his empty cappuccino cup. Philip nodded slowly, with such a wistful look on his face that Jase’s smile faltered. He turned, suddenly needing to be closer to his new friend, but as he did, a group of businessmen entered, chatting noisily as they queued up behind him. Leaving the line now would mean another ten-minute wait. So Jase gave his order and broke Baby’s twenty to buy the refills, smiling while the barista made change. Paying five bucks for mediocre coffee had never felt so good.

Already he felt different, more focused. He had somebody who understood, who could help. He might even have an ally. He turned, coffees in hand and more questions on his lips, but the table was empty.